Taps Off Subject

[wogamax@utility.net]

....When the Captain finally reached his own lines, he 
discovered it was actually a Confederate soldier, but the soldier
 was dead....his own son...He asked the bugler to play a series 
of musical notes he had found on a piece of paper in the pocket of
 his dead son's uniform......

Kevin,

This is a romantic account of where the melody came from and 
would certainly do justice to the feelings it conjures.  The problem I 
saw with it, however, was that bugles can only reproduce melodies 
of specific intervals and not the entire scale.  Needless to say, the 
odds that a randomly composed piece of music can be played on 
one are slim, unless written by a bugler.

A net search provided a little more information.  The current 
accounts of its past still points to glorious roots, though somewhat 
less dramatic.  It turns out it is an adaptation of a bugle call from 
many decades before the civil war done by a soldier named Daniel 
Adams Butterfield. 

http://www.west-point.org/taps/Taps.html

Respectfully Submitted,
Chris Woodward,  former Bugler